Ivan Josip Skender

Composer and conductor Ivan Josip Skender is a versatile musician with a very wide range of activities. He studied composition in 1997 at the Academy of Music in Zagreb in the class of Željko Brkanović, as the youngest composition student in the history of the Academy, and in 1999 he also started studying conducting in the class of Vjekoslav Šutej. As a postgraduate he studied in Vienna with Uroš Lajovic and attended seminars and workshops in composition with Michael Jarell and Joszef Soproni, and in conducting with Klaus Arp, Bertrand de Billy, Zubin Mehta and others.

His wide and versatile opus includes music for soloists, chamber ensembles, orchestras, choirs, music for theater performances, a musical, the opera Šuma Striborova, by far the most performed opera of the Zagreb Music Biennale.

As a conductor, he collaborated with numerous Croatian and international ensembles. The Academy Choir of Palma won numerous awards in Croatia and abroad under his leadership. He is particularly devoted to performing and premiering works by contemporary Croatian authors, and in 2012 the members of the contemporary music ensemble Cantus chose him as their permanent conductor. From 2005 to 2019, he was choir leader and conductor at the Opera of the Croatian National Theater in Zagreb, and in the 2013/2014 season he was the acting director of the Theatre’s Opera Department. In 2009, he became an assistant to Uroš Lajovic at the Academy of Music, and since 2019 he is assistant professor in the conducting department. He is the recipient of multiple awards and incentives for his artistic work. Since 2019, he has been a member of the artistic leadership of the Zagreb Music Biennale, and in 2020 he was appointed a member of the assembly of representatives of the Croatian Society of Composers.